Naki
(Disques Solo Jazz Records)
Reviewed by Dean Cottrill

Upon hearing Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, I thought I was listening to more than just a trio of instruments, such was the richness of texture and dynamics, the revelatory dreaminess that infuses his work. And while in the intervening century we’ve come down to earth in our capacity for finer music, occasionally someone comes along with something new that takes us out of the streetnoise of Honda-red testosterone rap.

Well, Naki may not bear the marked genius of a Debussy, but there is a lot of the meditative in his work on the stick harp (a hybrid of Chapman stick and harp), at times reminiscent of the new age worldbeat sounds of people like Algerian-born guitarist Pierre Bensusan.

Whatever his sources, Naki has a roadmap of choices to explore, ranging from percussive tirades to mantra-esque invocations juxtaposed in various compound and simple time signatures. It is an instinctive blending of these and a cosmos of melodic soundscapes against free arpeggios on the harp that hold the listener. Given the limitations/assets of the stick harp, one suspects that the harmonic interest is more incidental, a byproduct phenomenon of the nature of the artist and his expressive capacity on the instrument. He is not preoccupied with key or movement away from or towards tonic stability. Rather, tonic stability is the unifying factor. And while there is a usage of synthetic textures, it is not an over reliance that could, in less capable hands, mar the integrity of the work.

Withdraw into the temple of Naki’s music, and you can delight in a variety of cross-cultural references, for example the harp/sitar exploration in Raga. There is motion from an experimental percussiveness in the earlier cuts to a more serene quality in the later ones. You are left with a sense of playfulness and of mystery in how he ever managed to pull off this intriguing endeavour.

Dean Cottrill is a Montreal-based guitarist, songwriter and singer.